This film is a sort of notebook of a trip to Poland in winter 2005/2006.
I shot some sequences while moving by train  from the city of Wroclaw (Breslau) to the town of Walbrzych (Waldenburg), a former mining site active until the 90s, today in crisis, due to the closing up of the mines and the consequent firing of hundreds of workers.  On December 25th, in the afternoon, the streets are almost completely deserted, covered in snow, a dusty snow, punctuated by empty bottles here and there; many palaces in the centre are grey and fatiscent, people’s faces are sad (especially men’s), while wandering through the streets like ghosts...

Two years later, while watching again the materials shot there, I’ve started building up a concept for a film to be settled in this town; a film which talks of a journey from a modern rich city to a grey poor abandoned town; then I have thought of assembling a sort of visual studio about the location, just as a portrait of this place to show for fund-searching as well as a sort of visual-diary/documentation of this trip.

FOUR STUDIES ON LOCATION AND PEOPLE is a wordless circular and hypnotic film portraying a train and its windows, passengers shots, positions and gestures... a desert station under the snow, where coloured trains seem to move by themselves... an empty labyrinth explored by a camera; desert streets open to desert squares which suddenly change alchemically into other desert corners and court-yards, slow and inexorable... a trip back which looks more to a journey backwards...
The soundtrack mixes the original sounds of the miniDV with banjo, sampled instruments and electronics, a sort of authonomous composition which might be considered an experimental radio-piece as well.

The film is also part of a more extended project on Walbrzych, entitled POLISH NOTEBOOK started in 2004 with the film CZARNA MADONNA, and previously (in 2003) with some texts, actually part of my script TACCUINO DI VIAGGIO (Travel Notebook 2002/2003) readable at (http://www.stefanogiannotti.com/taccuinodiviaggio.html)

Direction and music: Stefano Giannotti
Produced by Stefano Giannotti between December 2005 and April 2008
© Copyright by S.Giannotti 2005/2008, All Rights Reserved




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